Buckle up! Not only do seatbelts save lives, but they make for super strong and comfortable furniture as well. The tightly woven nylon that makes seat belts capable of withstanding up to 5,000 pounds of force, is an ideal material for a flexible woven seat in chairs and benches. Designer Peter Danko rescues post-industrial automotive seatbelts from becoming landfill fodder, and gives them new life as seat webbing in his Arbor furniture line.
I must admit, I’ve always loved the shiny woven texture of seatbelts, and I think the seatbelt fabric looks great with the maple frames. I particularly like the dark stained wood with the lighter seatbelt colors (as shown in most of the photos I’ve grabbed), but the chairs, stools and benches are available in a wide range of other colors as well. Black is the standard seatbelt color apparently, as the colored seatbelts cost slightly more.
Danko’s Arbor furniture is available through Vivavi.com
On a similar note, Treehugger has an article about handbags made out of seatbelts.
Freitag has been making bags out of tire innertubes with seatbelt handles.